It can sometimes be difficult to accurately assess your work, and the task becomes even more arduous when you're working on an entertaining poker roguelike game. For example, Balatro creator LocalThunk was stunned to see such high review scores pouring in after the game released in 2024.
"February 19th rolls around," he recalls in a detailed timeline posted to his blog. "The 19th is the review embargo day, and [publisher] Playstack did a truly exceptional job getting this game in the hands of traditional media to write their reviews before launch."
"I didn't know what to expect," LocalThunk continues. "This was a pretty weird game after all. Average ratings of 6 or 7?"
Nope. Balatro was quickly met with jackpot numbers across the board, shooting up to a 90 score on Metacritic, which it has since maintained.
"I am shocked. That rating doesn't make any sense," LocalThunk remembers thinking. "I don't think I would have rated Balatro higher than an 8, and I made the damn thing."
The game gathered 208,401 wishlists on Steam by its launch day, but LocalThunk couldn't get it out of his head that his avalanche of success would all come crashing down.
"I fully anticipated the sky to fall and for me to be working 24/7 to fix the inevitable disaster," he says, remembering that he was gearing up to be "patching like a madman" for a full month after Balatro's launch.
"I told my partner that I won’t be making any plans until the end of March," he remembers.
But LocalThunk was underestimating himself again; Balatro launched with negligible bugs, and its first few hours generated over $600,000, so LocalThunk had no choice but to reward himself with some burgers and champagne. If there's one thing that's easy to predict, it's one's inevitable need for burgers and champagne.
Balatro dev says solitaire exists "at the peak of game culture" and was debatably "the most important" inspiration for his poker roguelike.
